Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:10:51.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Concepts of Mission in Scottish Presbyterianism: The SSPCK, the Highlands and Britain's American Colonies, 1709–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2018

Clare Loughlin
Clare Loughlin*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
*19/1 Spottiswoode Rd, Edinburgh, EH9 1BJ. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) and its missions in the Highlands and Britain's American colonies. Constituted in 1709 and operating as an auxiliary arm of the Church of Scotland, the SSPCK aimed to extend Christianity in ‘Popish and Infidel parts of the world’. It founded numerous Highland charity schools, and from 1729 sponsored missions to Native Americans in New England and Georgia. Missions were increasingly important in British overseas expansion; consequently, historians have viewed the society as a civilizing agency, which deployed religious instruction to assimilate ‘savage’ heathens into the fold of Britain's empire. This article suggests that the SSPCK was equally concerned with Christianization: missionaries focused on spiritual edification for the salvation of souls, indicating a disjuncture between the society's objectives and the priorities of imperial expansion. It also challenges the parity assumed by historians between the SSPCK's domestic and foreign missions, arguing that the society increasingly prioritized colonial endeavours in an attempt to recover providential favour. In doing so, it sheds new light on Scottish ideas of mission during the first half of the eighteenth century, and reassesses the Scottish Church's role in Britain's emerging empire.

Keywords

SSPCKMissionsScottish HighlandsAmericaempire
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 54: THE CHURCH AND EMPIRE , June 2018 , pp. 190 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

For their advice during the preparation of this article I am especially grateful to Alasdair Raffe, Alexander Murdoch and Gabriel Glickman. This research was supported by the Wolfson Foundation.

References

1 Meek, Donald E., ‘Scottish Highlanders, North American Indians and the SSPCK: Some Cultural Perspectives’, RSCHS 23 (1989), 378–96Google Scholar, at 382.

2 Edinburgh, NRS, SSPCK General Meeting Minutes [hereafter: GMM], GD95/1/1, 31; Prunier, Clotilde, Anti-Catholic Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2004), 131–6Google Scholar.

3 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/1, 32.

4 Grigg, John A., ‘“How This Shall Be Brought About”: The Development of the SSPCK's American Policy’, Itinerario 32 (2008), 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Porter, Andrew, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester, 2004), 7Google Scholar; Stevens, Laura M., ‘The Souls of Highlanders, the Salvation of Indians: Scottish Mission and Eighteenth-Century British Empire’, in Martin, Joel W. and Nicholas, Mark A., eds, Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), 179–201Google Scholar, at 185–8.

6 Meek, ‘Highlanders’, 384.

7 Ibid. 396.

8 Maxwell, Ian, ‘Civilization or Christianity? The Scottish Debate on Mission Methods’, in Stanley, Brian, ed., Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Richmond, VA, 2001), 123–41Google Scholar, at 124; Stephen, Jeffrey, Defending the Revolution: The Church of Scotland 1689–1716 (Farnham, 2013), 258–9Google Scholar.

9 Meek, Donald E., ‘Protestant Missions and the Evangelization of the Scottish Highlands, 1700–1850’, IBMR 21 (1997), 67–71Google Scholar, at 68.

10 Porter, Religion versus Empire, 32–6; Stevens, ‘Souls of Highlanders’, 187.

11 Marsden, George M., Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, CT, and London, 2003), 320–30Google Scholar.

12 Rusty Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions and Religious Enlightenment in Colonial America: The SSPCK in Transatlantic Context’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012), 225–58.

13 Ibid. 97.

14 Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 1992), 19–54Google Scholar.

15 Meek, ‘Highlanders’, 378.

16 Prunier, Strategies, 22.

17 Nathan P. Gray, ‘“A publick benefite to the nation”: The Charitable and Religious Origins of the SSPCK, 1690–1715’ (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011), 130–1.

18 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/1, 31.

19 Prunier, Strategies, 131.

20 NRS, SSPCK Committee Meeting Minutes [hereafter: CMM], GD95/2/4, 193.

21 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/1, 31.

22 Gray, ‘Charitable and Religious Origins’, 184.

23 Ibid. 101.

24 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/1, 135–8; for Episcopalian reactions to this policy, see Stephen, Defending the Revolution, 261.

25 On the difficulties schoolmasters faced in securing children's attendance at Presbyterian services, see Clotilde Prunier, ‘“They must have their children educated some way”: The Education of Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, InR 60 (2009), 22–40, at 29–33.

26 Gray, ‘Charitable and Religious Origins’, 179.

27 Prunier, Strategies, 22–3.

28 NRS, Presbytery of Gairloch Minutes, CH2/567/1, 8–9.

29 Withers, C. W. J., ‘Education and Anglicization: The Policy of the SSPCK towards the Education of the Highlander, 1709–1825’, Journal of Scottish Studies 26 (1982), 37–56Google Scholar. See Gray, ‘Charitable and Religious Origins’, 11–13, for a critique of the SSPCK as an anti-Gaelic organization.

30 Memorial concerning the State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (London, 1723), 1.

31 NRS, CMM, GD95/2/4, 241; Prunier, Strategies, 21.

32 For example, An Account of the Rise, Constitution and Management of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1720), 7.

33 NRS, Presbytery of Mull Minutes, CH2/273/1, 17; NRS, GMM, GD95/1/4, 57; MacInnes, John, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland, 1688 to 1800 (Aberdeen, 1951), 251Google Scholar.

34 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 147.

35 Ibid.

36 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/2, 111.

37 NRS, CMM, GD95/2/4, 91–2.

38 NRS, Royal Bounty Committee Register, CH1/5/51, 338–40.

39 The State of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1729), 27–33; Prunier, Strategies, 139.

40 A True Copy of the Last Will and Testament of the Late Reverend Daniel Williams, DD (London, 1717), 16–18.

41 Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions’, 65.

42 Kellaway, William, The New England Company, 1649–1776: Missionary Society to the American Indians (London, 1961), 186Google Scholar.

43 NRS, CMM, GD95/2/3, 149.

44 Grigg, ‘SSPCK's American Policy’, 47–8.

45 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 201.

46 Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions’, 93.

47 NRS, CMM, GD95/2/5, 252.

48 Stevens, ‘Souls of Highlanders’, 186.

49 Murdoch, Alexander, Scotland and America, c.1600–c.1800 (Basingstoke, 2010), 111Google Scholar.

50 Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions’, 97–8.

51 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 214.

52 Stevens, ‘Souls of Highlanders’, 193.

53 Grigg, ‘SSPCK's American Policy’, 44; Stevens, ‘Souls of Highlanders’, 184.

54 For instances of confessional conflict between the SSPCK and other missionary organizations, see Kellaway, New England Company, 187.

55 NRS, CMM, GD95/2/4, 303–4. In 1730 the Philadelphia synod declared its enthusiasm for the project, but by this point the SSPCK had settled on New England: NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 206–8.

56 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 198.

57 Ibid. 213–14.

58 Ibid. 214.

59 Ibid. 373–4.

60 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/4, 57; Grigg, ‘SSPCK's American Policy’, 52.

61 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/4, 57.

62 ‘Act in favour of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge’, in The Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1729), 9.

63 Matthison, John, The Necessity of Divine Revelation and Knowledge thereof in Order to Salvation (Edinburgh, 1730), 21Google Scholar.

64 For example, NRS, CH1/2/73, fol. 336, Donald McLeod to the Royal Bounty Committee, 6 March 1736.

65 A Short State of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1732), 27.

66 Hamilton, William, The Truth and Excellency of the Christian Religion (Edinburgh, 1732), 31Google Scholar.

67 The Highland Complaint, Transmitted by a Gentleman of that Country to his Friend at Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1737), 18–22.

68 NRS, GD95/10/144B, Letter to Highland presbyteries concerning new parishes, 1737.

69 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/4, 17.

70 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 452.

71 Murdoch, Scotland and America, 113.

72 Hamilton, Truth and Excellency, 28.

73 Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions’, 98–9.

74 Murdoch, Scotland and America, 113.

75 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/4, 86–7.

76 De Jong, James A., As the Waters cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions 1640–1810 (London, 1970), 113Google Scholar.

77 Millar, Robert, The History of the Propagation of Christianity, and Overthrow of Paganism, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1723), 2: 523–4.Google Scholar

78 Smith, James, The Misery of Ignorant and Unconverted Sinners (Edinburgh, 1733), 22Google Scholar.

79 Murdoch, Scotland and America, 126.

80 Ibid. 132–3.

81 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 178.

82 Roberson, ‘Scottish Missions’, 109.

83 NRS, GMM, GD95/1/3, 197.

84 Smith, Unconverted Sinners, 22.

85 Webster, Alexander, Supernatural Revelation the only Sure Hope of Sinners (Edinburgh, 1741), 49Google Scholar.

86 Gowdie, John, The Propagation of Christianity and the Blessed Effects thereof (Edinburgh, 1735), 25–6Google Scholar.

87 Walls, Andrew F., The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Edinburgh, 1996), 203–4Google Scholar.

88 A Succinct View of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, [1740?]), 4.